Peoples and Civilizations of the Americas, 200-1500

I. Olmec Civilization--the first great civilization of the Americas (that archeologists know about, anyway).

1. Located in the narrow “waist” of Mexico, recognizable civilization by about 1800 BCE.

2.Lived in towns and cities centered on temple mounds that they built. Created large stone heads with helmets, many over six feet tall, that are vaguely African in appearence and have sparked speculations that African peoples may have made contact with them.

3.Olmec practiced human sacrifice (as did the God of Abraham)

4.Intellectual feats--invented a dozen different systems of writing, tracked the orbits of planets, created a 365-day calendar (much more accurate than any used in Europe to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar), and wrote down their histories in accordian-folded books made of fig tree bark. Olmec scholars also invented the concept of zero, which didn’t appear in Europe until the 12th century (1100s)

II. Classic-Era Culture and Society in Mesoamerica, 200-900

A. Teotihuacan--was located about 30 miles northeast of modern Mexico City. It existed between the years 100 to 750, and at its height of power was home to more than 150,000 people--as large as some of the largest cities in Europe and Asia

1. The Role of Religion--The people of Teotihuacan recognized and worshiped many gods and lesser spirits, but the three main gods were the Sun and Moon and Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, god of agriculture and the arts. Murals left indicate that these people also worshiped a storm god called Tlaloc and a female fertility god..

a. Human sacrifice--like the Olmec before them, the Teotihuacan people practiced human sacrifice. These people probably saw human sacrifice as a duty to appease their gods, and believed that it was essential to ensuring the well-being of their society.

2. Agriculture--the elites in Teotihuacan controlled the farmers in the rural areas surrounding the city. Scholars believe this came about from the after-effects of a volcanic eruption, when farmers fled the countryside for the safety of the nearby city. Approximately two-thirds of the city remained agricultural workers, walking from the city out the to fields, and then returning to the city in the evening.

a. Religion and the city--elites were able to control the rural population because of the religious power and symbolism of their city. Teotihuacan was the center of religious practice, and the worship and appeasement of the gods kept order in society.

b. Chinampas--the Teotihuacans developed an early method of hydroponic farming, where they wove together reeds, dredged muck from lake bottoms, anchored it to shore, and were able to grow food year round, because it was resistant to frost. In this way the Teotihuacans were able to support a growing population.

3. Decline and collapse--It is unclear what exactly cause the Teotihuacan society to collapse, but we do know that by the year 500 the population of the city had declined to about 40,000, and those who were left had built defensive walls around the city, an indication that there were threats from the countryside. Pictorial evidence suggests that elites mismanaged resources, and in the societal strife that followed, various factions broke off and fought amongst themselves. The most important temples were burned, and religious images defaced. By the year 750, the collapse was complete

B. The Maya--occupied the territory that now makes up Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and southern Mexico. Although the Maya shared a single culture, they were never one unified state; instead, rival kingdoms ruled by hereditary elites fought each other for regional dominance--much like Mycenaean-era Greeks. The Yucatan Peninsula, where most of the Mayan cities were located, was ill-suited to support a large population, since only a thin layer of soil covers a strata of porous limestone. The abundance of rainfall quickly passes through the soil, and into limestone caverns, where it quickly becomes undrinkable.

1. City of Kaan--the discovery of the City of the Snake, which covered as much as 25 miles and contained thousands of buildings, alterred the perception of Mayan civilization.

a.) By the year 2000, archeologists uncovered evidence that Kaan was involved in a devastating war that lasted more than a century, and which contributed to its downfall.

2. Mayan civilization was one of the world’s most intellectually sophisticated cultures; developed written language, science, math (invention of zero).

3. Mayans inhabited land that was poorly suited to intensive agriculture, but at the height of their civilization supported a population of upwards of a million people.

a.) Prolonged drought and war decimated the population; archeologists discovered that at the end, priest were inscribing gibberish on stone tablets--they appeared to have lost knowledge of literacy, but still attempted to follow their cultural function.

C. Toltec civilization--occupied the mile-high basin that Mexico City now sits on; their military expertise allowed them to defeat and subjugate most of their enemies. Aztecs believed that Toltecs created everything that contributed to the development of their civilization, although we know that the Toltecs borrowed heavily from the civilizations that preceded them/

1. Internal strife--including allegations of drunkeness and incest--led to the king leaving with a few followers, promising to return. He appears to have set up shop instead in the weakened Mayan sphere, and established a semi-Toltec fiefdom. But his promise to return was portentous for the Aztec civilization that followed.

D. Aztec civilization--what we usually call Aztec is actually an alliance of three native peoples living in city-states around a large lake that was near present-day Mexico City, known as the Triple Alliance. Although this implies an equal share of the rule, in fact it was a very unequal partnership. The rulers in Tlacopan received one-fifth of the tribute, those in Nezahialcoyot received two-fifths, and the Mexica of Tenochtitlan received two-fifths.

1. Mexica people--arrived in the Valley of Mexico in the 12th century (1100s), and served as vassals of the people already living there. Feeling ill-treated, they made alliances with the aforementioned two other groups, and were able to overcome the Toltecs.

2. Usual practice of conquerers in the Valley of Mexico was to destroy the history of the conquered people; the Mexica went a step further and destroyed their own history so that they could re-invent themselves as a people of destiny.

3. Tlacaclel--when the Aztecs came to power, Tlacaclel believed the Mexica were destined for greatness, and was the principle developer of the ideology that the Mexica were responsible for maintaining order in the cosmos (meaning the daily rising of the sun)--but that this order could only be maintained by ritual human sacrifice.

4. Warfare--was the means of maintaining a steady flow of sacrificial victims. Mexica military technique was the mano a mano face-off, and the victims were usually beaten into submission--then taken into the victor’s home, and treated like family until sacrifice time. Warfare for native peoples was a means of displaying manhood, rather than killing one’s enemies.

5. Tenochtlitan, the capital of the Mexica, was far cleaner than its European counterparts--and far larger, as well; it probably was home to over 100,000 people by 1520. It had a large workforce to remove garbage, etc., and a sewer system to remove human waste (in Europe, they simply threw it into the streets, where it mixed with animal waste and garbage). But this system was teetering on the brink of collapse even before the Spanish showed up.

6.Vassal states--the ruling hand of Aztecs was rather heavy, with tribute and the constant threat of warfare to gain sacrificial victims, so when someone showed up promising to upset the balance of power, their were plenty of eager allies.

III. Northern Peoples

A Southwestern Desert Cultures--Around 300 B.C.E. in what is today Arizona, contacts with people living in Mexico led to the introduction of agriculture based on irrigation and maize. Irrigation allowed the planting of two crops every year, the population grew and villages appeared. The Hohokam, who settled in the Salt and Gila River Valleys (around present-day Phoenix), showed the strongest Mexican influence, incorporating many cultural artifacts from Mexico into their own daily life.

1. Anasazi--used to identify a number of dispersed, but similar, desert cultures in the Four Corners region of the present-day states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. With irrigation, they grew maize, beans, and squash, as well as cotton, into which they made cloth. After 900, these people lived in multi-story residential and ritual centers (which was why they were called "Pueblos" by the Spanish), incorporating connected residences and kivas.

B. Mound Builders: Hopewell and Mississippian Cultures--natives that lived in the fertile bottom land along the Ohio River and, eventually theMississippi River, near present-day St. Louis, but impacting an area reaching from southern Minnesota to central Alabama.

1. Hopewell--Hopewell towns in the Ohio River Valley had several thousand inhabitants and served as ceremonial and political centers. Large mounds were built to house burials and serve as platforms for religious rituals. Often, these mounds were shaped to resemble creatures the people held sacred, and reflect sunrise and moonrise patters. People living in these towns relied manly on hunting and gathering, with little agriculture--which restricted their size, of course. We are not sure what caused their decline, but the abandoment of major sites around 400 signalled that the decline took place.

2. Mississippian Culture--Cahokia at its apex supported upwards of 15,000 to 60,000 people. By c.1400, workers at the settlement had denuded the immediate area of trees for various building projects, which removed the means of preventing erosion during sometimes severe midwestern thunderstorms. Flooding and erosion during critical growing times meant the loss of the maize crop, and led to the destruction of the civilization

2. While at its apex, Cahokia was a major trade center, a place of exchange between the plains and the woodlands with the gulf coast--and even beyond, into present-day Mexico.

3. Was Cahokia a civilization?--Cahokia was not filled with tradesmen, as we usually picture a city being; however, being the first city-like entity north of the Rio Grande River, they had no idea of what a city was.

III. Andean Civilization, 200-1500

A. Chavin Civilization--by the time of the Chavin, enormous environmental challenges had been overcome to allow human civilization to exist. People had learned to effectively fish the rich source off-shore, and to deal with the lack of rain with irrigation--and to grow food in the mountains, even though there was a danger of frost between 250-300 days each year. This required an accurate calendar and the domestication of frost-resistant varieties of potatoes and grains.

1. Ayllu--the clan, which was the foundation of Andean achievement. The ayllu members thought of each other as brother and sister, and were obligated to assist one another to accomplish tasks that a single family could not accomplish on their own.

2. Mit'a--with the formation of territorial states ruled by hereditary aristocracies and kings after 1000, the obligations of the ayllu were extended to the mit'a, a rotational labor draft that performed work in the fields, herded llama and alpaca for religious establishiments, the aristocracy, and the royal court, and well as construction of roads, public buildings, irrigation and drainage projects. They also made textiles and beer made from maize and coca (Loko One?)

B. Moche--Around 200, some four centuries after the collapse of the Chavin, the Moche developed the cultural and political tools needed to dominate the north coastal region of Peru. The did not establish a formal empire or create unified political structures, but they did exercise authority over a broad region.

1. Moche social order--evidence indicated that the Moche cultivated maize, quinoa, beans, manioc, and sweet potoatoes with the aid of massive irrigation works that the Moche rulers forced commoners and subject peoples to build and maintain. Moche society was highly stratified, with the elite constructing their dwellings on platforms so that they literally looked down on commoners, enhancing their position in society.

2. Environment crisis and decline--the archaeological record makes clear that the rapid decline of Moche civilization was spurred by a succession of natural disasters in the sixth century, including a 30 year drought which expanded the area of costal dunes and clogged the irrigation system. Coupled with the development of a new military power to their immediate south, the Moche were never able to recover.

C. Tiwanaku and Wari--Tiwanaku developed near Lake Titicaca; modern excavations indicate that a vast drainage project undertaken was able to reclaim nearly 200,000 acres of lake bottom land for agriculture, and this allowed them to support a population of upwards of 30,000 12,500 feet above sea level (about 4 miles).

1. Tiwanaku social structure--it is clear that Tiwanaku was a highly stratified society ruled by a hereditary elite that controlled a large, disciplined labor force in the surrounding region

2. Wari--located about 450 miles northwest of Tiwanaku, the Wari shared many elements of their culture, but the relationship between the two remains obscure. Some scholars maintain that Wari was a dependency of Tiwanaku, while others suggest they were joint capitals of a single empire. What is clear from the evidence in the lack of cut stone masonry in public an private buildings is that the Wari elite were either weaker than their Tiwanaku counterparts, or they lacked the necesarry skill.

3. Eclispe of Tiwanaku and Wari--a time of increased warfare throughout the Andes around 1000 led to the downfall of both the Tiwanaku and Wari, and their replacement by the Inca.

B. Inca civilization
1. The Inca Empire--was the largest empire in the world during its time, stretching nearly the entire west coast of South America; much of the empire was contained within the Andes Mountains, at heights were sustaining civilization is very difficult.

2. Inca reign--lasted just over one hundred years before its demise at the hands of Francisco Pizzaro; but as we shall see, like his cousin Cortez, he lucked into attacking an empire that was suffering from internal difficulties that contributed to its downfall.
3. Rise of the Inca--Inca was the name for the people, as well as incorporated into the name of the ruler.

a.) Originated near Lake Titicaca, in the Andes along the border of present-day Peru and Bolivia. Move then to area near Cusco (or Qosqo)

b.) Inca made enemies of the Chanka people, were suppose to be led into battle by Wiraqocha Inca and his designated heir (the Inca named their successors), Inca Urqon. The fled the Chanka, however, and the Incas were led into battle by the youngest son, Inca Cusi Yupaki, who led them to victory. After being tipped off to his father’s plans to have him murdered, Yupaki foiled the plot, and his humiliated father fled. Yupaki then renamed himself Pachakuti (“Worldshaker”) in Runa Sumi, the Inkan language.
c.) The Hegemonic Empire--Pachakuti formed his empire largely by persuading other peoples to adopt Inca ways of life and Inka protections; then co-opting local rulers to do his bidding.
d.) Succession problems--naming the successor worked as long as it was a decisive decision--and the person named outlived the Inka. By the early 1500s, to successive ascensions to the throne were contested, setting off small civil wars in Inkan society; the second was only resolved just before the appearance of Pizzaro.

Inner and East Asia, 581-755

I. The Sui and Tang Empires, 581-755

A. Sui Empire

1. Reunification of China--After the fall of the Han Dynasty, China was fragmeneted for several centuries. It was reunified under the Sui dynasty, a father and son ruling duo who held power from 581 until Turks from Inner Asia defeated the son in 615.

2. Sui rulers--called their new capital Chang'an in honor of the old capital in the Wei River Valley. Though northern China constituted the Sui heartland,  population centered along the Yangzi River in the south and pointed the way for future Chinese expansion. To facilitate communication and trade with the south the Sui built the 1,100 mile long Grand Canal

3. Sui military ambitions--extended to Korea and Vietnam, as well as Inner Asia, and required high levels of organization and the mustering or resources--manpower, livestock, wood, iron, and food supplies. The same was true of their massive public works projects. These burdens proved to be more than the Sui could sustain. Over-extension compounded the political dilemma stemming from the military defeat and subsequent assassination of the second Sui emperor. These circumstances opened the way for another strong leader to establish a new state.

4. In 618 the powerful Li family took advantage of the Sui disorder to carve out an empire of similar scale and ambition. They adopted the dynastic name Tang. The brilliant emperor Li Shimin extended his power primarily westward into Inner Asia. Though he and succeeding rulers of the Tang Empire retained many Sui governing practices, they avoided over-centralization by allowing local nobles, gentry, officials, and religious establishments to exercise significant amounts of power.

B. Buddhism and the Tang Empire--the Tang rulers followed Inner Asian precedents in their political use of Buddhism. State cults based on Buddhism had flourished in Inner Asia and North China since the fall of the Han dynasty. Some interpretations of Buddhist doctrines accorded kings and emperors the spiritual function of welding humankind into a harmonious Buddhist society. Protecting spirits were to help the rulers govern and protect the people from harm.

1. Mahayana Sect--Mahayana Buddhism predominated in the region, and fostered a faith in enlightened beings--bodhisattvas--who postponed nirvana to help others achieve enlightenment. This permitted the absorption of local gods and goddesses into Mahayana sainthood and made conversion of local peoples more attractive to them. Mahayana also encouraged translating Buddhist scripture into local languages, and it accepted religious practices not based on written texts.

2. Inter-regional contacts--as the Tang Empire expanded westward, contacts with western Asia and India increased, as did the complexity of the Buddhist influence throughout China. Chang'an became the center of a continent-wide system of communication and trade.

C. To Chang'an by Land and Sea

1. Tributary system--a type of political relationship dating from Han time by which independent countries acknowledged the Chinese emperor's supremacy by sending representatives bearing gifts. While the "inferior" countries may have seen this as a way to facilitate trade with China, the Chinese saw it as a political relationship/

C. Upheavals and Repression, 750-879

1. Opposition to Buddhism--the later years of the Tang dynasty witnessed increased conflict with Tibetans and Uighurs; one result of this was a backlash among the Chinese against "foreigners," which, to Confucians, meant all Buddhists

2. Wu Zhao--Buddhism was also attacked for encouraging women to become involved in politics. One, Wu Zhao, declared herself empress by claiming to be a bodhisattva. She was not deposed until 705, when she was more than eighty years old.

3. Closing the monasteries--because Buddhist monks and nuns renounced earthly treasures, and live in poverty, they were exempt from taxation--although the monasteries where they lived tended to collect great riches. This, coupled with the fact that these monks and nuns also practiced celibacy, made them seem threatening to Confucians. By 840, the government moved to crush these monasteris, and within 5 years 4,600 temples had been destroyed, and an enormous amount of land and 150,000 workers returned to the tax rolls.

D. The End of the Tang Empire, 879-907

1. An Lushan Rebellion--The defeat of the Chinese army at the Battle of Talas River in 751, which halted Chinese expansion in Western Asia, also led to army demoralization and underfunding. A disgruntled general by the name of An Lushan led his soldiers in a rebellion against the emperor, resulting in his fleeing from the capital. The rebellion lasted eight years, and was only put down by provincial military governors--which further eroded the power of the emperor.

2. Further unrest--a disgruntled member of the gentry led another rebellion, which peasants and other poor farmers joined because it offered some protection  from local bosses and landlords. Hatred of foreigners proved an outlet for this stress, and thousands of the foreigners were murdered on Canton and Beijing.

II. The Emergence of East Asia, to 1200

A. Emergence of Three New States--formed in the vaccuum created by the disintegration of the Tang Empire.

1. Liao Empire--established by the Khitan people, pastoral nomads related to the Mongols living on the northwest frontier. Centered their government in cities, but the emperor preferred life in nomad encampments.

2. Tanggut Empire (1038-1227)--of the Minyak people, who were related to the Tibetans on the Inner Asian frontier in northwestern China

3. Song Empire--Chinese-speaking, located in central China beginning around 960.

B. The Liao and Jin Challenge

1. Khitan People--extended from Siberia to Inner Asia. Liao rulers prided themselves on their pastoral traditions as horse and cattle herders, and made no attempt to impose a single elite culture.

2. Conquest of the Song--the Liao used their skill on horseback and as archers along with the technology of seize engines that they had learned from people in western Asia to defeat the Song, and forced them to send tribute in the form of gold and other valuable metals, and silk.

3. Jin Empire--after a century of paying tribute, the Song allied with the Jurchen people. The Jurchens toppled the Liao, burning their capital in Mongolia, and proclaimed their own empire--and then turned on the Song, defeating them in 1127 by laying siege to the capital, Kaifeng, and then capturing the Song emperor. As a result, the Song withdrew south of the Yellow River, leaving central China in Jurchen control.

C. Song Industries--the Southern Song (as this period is referred to by historinas) came closer to an industrial revolution than any other premodern society.

1. Technology--the Song incorported the technology that had earlier come to Tang China to meet their military, agricultural, and administrative needs.

2. Transportation--refined the compass, which allowed them to use it on sea-going vessels, like the main ocean-going vessel that was also developed around this time, the junk.

3. Iron and Steel--the Song were able to fight their neighbors to the north, and gained control of a significan number of iron and coal mines there--which allowed them to refine the manufacture of iron and develop the manufacture of steel.

4. Gunpowder--to counter cavalry assaults, the Song experimented with the use of gunpowder, which they used to propel clusters of flaming arrows. They later developed the mortar.

D. Economy and Society in Song China--despite living in a war-like era, Song elite culture idealized civil pursuits, and the civil official outranked the military officer.

1. Neo-Confucianism--new interpretations of Confucian teachings became important during the Song era, and later versions incorporated these new interpretations. A man named Zhu Xi (1130-1200), the most important early thinking propelling neo-Confucianism, wrote in reaction to the many centuries when Buddhism and Daoism had overshadowed the concepts of Confucius. He and others worked out a systematic approach to cosmology that focused on the central conception that human nature is moral, rational, and essentially good. Their human ideal was the sage, who could preserve mental stability and serenity while dealing conscientiously with troubling social problems--in contrast to the bodhisattva, who largely withdrew from the world.

2. Mediative Buddhsim--Chan Buddhism (known as Zen in Japan--and the United States) emphasized meditation as a way of achieving salvation; it was probably this shift in emphasis that reconciled it with neo-Confucianism, which also emphasized meditation, after the hostile period Buddhist practice experienced during the Tang dynasty.

3. Examination system--hereditary class distinctions meant less during the Song dynasty than they had in the Tang, and efforts were made to recruit the most talented men, no matter what their origin--but men from rich families retained a distinct advantage, because they could prepare for the examinations much more thoroughly than their poorer counterparts.

4. Printing--a technical change to the woodblock led to the development of an early form of moveable type, and permitted the Song to authorize the mass production of preparation books in the years before 1000. Although one had to be literate to read the books, and a basic education was out of the reach of most Chinese, this did allow a few sons of poorer families to move into the Song bureaucracy.

5. Population growth--during the 1100s, as the Song added more territory and prosperity was the norm, China's population grew to more than 100 million people. Although no individual city was more than 1,000,000, the size of many Chinese cities dwarfed anything else in the world, and despite their size were much cleaner (and healthier) than cities in Europe.

6. Trade and Credit--begun during the Tang era, interregional or intercity money--promissary notes, in reality--largely depended upon family relationships in far-flung places. When the Song attempted to issue paper money to meet its obligations, it created inflation so severe that at the beginning of the 1100s that the paper money was trading at only 1 percent of its face value.

7. Status of women--although merchants depended upon their wives to run their businesses while they were off trading, rights of women further diminished under the Song. Women were only educated enough that they could function in an increasingly comples society, but not to the point where they could compete with men

a. Footbinding--although it appeared in the Tang era among slave dancers, footbinding became more widespread in the Song period. Females of elite families--or those who aspired to elite status--had their feet bound from a young age to make them more desirable for male suitors.

III. New Kingdoms in East Asia

A. Chinese influences--Korea, Japan, and Vietnam had first centralized power under ruling houses in the early Tang period, and their state ideologies continued to resemble that of the early Tang period, when Buddhism and Confucianism seemed more compatible.

B. Korea--our first knowledge of Kora, Japan, and Vietnam comes via Chinese visitors. During the Han era, it was noted that Koreans engaged in horse breeding, were ruled by strong hereditary elites, and practiced shamanism (the belief that certain individuals could contact the spirit world)--which was quickly replaced by Buddhism and Confucianism.

1. Aristocratic families--in the early 500 the dominant landholding families made inherited status--the "bone ranks"--permanent in southern Korea. In 668, the northern kingdom, known as Koguryo, came into conflict with the Sui and Tang. Supported by the Tang, the southern kingdom, known as Silla, took control of the north. In the early 900s, Silla collapsed, along with their patrons the Tang's, and this allowed the Koryo to rule a united peninsula for the next three centuries.

C. Japan--Consists of four main islans and many smaller ones stretching in an arc from as far north as Maine to as far south as Georgia. Mountainous and heavily forested in this early period, only 11 percent of its land was considered arable.

1. Yamato Regime--we are not sure at this point what spurred Japanese unification, although it seems likely that horse riders from Korea played a part. By the 600s, these rulers implemented the Taika and other refoms, which gave the Yamato regime key features of the Tang government. A legal code, an official variety of Confuciansim, and an official reverence for Buddhism blended with the local recognition on indigenous and immigrant chieftains as territorial administrators. Within a century, a centralized government with a complex system of law had emerged--attesting to the influence of Confucianism.

2. Chinese influences--Japanese incorporated Chinese building techniques, and by the 700s Japan had largely passed China in Buddhist studies--but Japan did not incorporate the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, instead believing that the ruling family to have ruled Japan since the beginning of time. While the dynasty never changed, the prime minister and leaders of the native religion, who held actual power, did change with some frequency.

3. Fujiwara Clan--in 794 the central government moved to Kyoto (then known as Heian), and remained centralized (more or less) until 1185, although central power had began to disintegrate near the end. Members of the Fukiwara clan controlled power and protected the emperor during much of this time, and favored men of Confucian learning over illiterate warriors.

4. The Shogunate--military values became increasingly important during the period from 1156-1185, when warfare between rival clans culminated in the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate, who replace the Fujiwara family.

D. Vietnam--not until the Tang era did the relationship between Vietnam and China become close enough for economic and cultural interchange to play an important role

1. Rice Culture--Vietnam's economic and poltical life centered on two fertile river valleys; the Red River in the north, and the Mekong River in the south. The rice-based agriculture of Vietnam made it well-suited to economic integration with southern China

2. Relations with China--although the Vietnamese may have adopted the use of draft animals before China, the elites of northern Vietnam adopted Confucian training, Mahayan Buddhism, and other aspects of Chinese culture. The Annamese continued to rule in the Tang style after that regimes fall; the Annam assumed the name Dai Viet in 936 and retained good relations with the Song as an independent country.

3. Champa--located in southern Vietnam, were more influenced by its maritime networks of trade with Malay and India. The Champa and Dai Viet were often fighting among themselves, but cooperate together to resist what threats would emanate from the Song

Christian Societies Emerge in Europe, 600-1200

I. The Byzantine Empire, 600-1200

A. An Empire Beleaguered--having a single ruler endowed with supreme legal and religious authority prevented the breakup of the Eastern Empire into petty principalities (as was the case with the Western Empire--the "fall" of Rome)--but a series of territorial losses sapped the strength of the empire.

1. Arab defeat of the Sasanid Empire

2. Arab victories also gain for them the former Byzantine controlled territories of Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia.

3. The threat of Islam--the rise of Islam in these territories meant the diminished influence of Christianity there; by the end of the 12th century, some two-thirds of the Christians in these former Byzantine territories had adopted the Muslim faith.

4. Christiam schism--at the same time that the Byzantine Empire was being threatened by Islam, worsening relations with the bishops of Rome and western princes limited the support for Byzantium when it was most needed; by 1054, religious differences between the eastern Christian churches and the Latin Church in the west had grown into a full schism that has only partly been mended.

B. Society and Urban Life

1. Plague of Justinian--although the eastern empire was more urbanized, both parts of the empire were devasted during the 6th century epidemic of bubonic plague, named for the emperor Justinian, who ruled Byzantium from 527 to 565. Narrative histories tell us little about its effects, but popular narratives of the lives of saints show a transition from stories about educated saints hailing from cities to stories about saints who originated as peasants

2. Urban elite population shrinks--as the urban elite population shrank, the importance of high-ranking aristocrats and rural landowners increased. Populations in cities shrank, and in many area barter replaced money transactions.

3. Rise of Rural Elites--as the number of urban elite shrank, the importance of high-ranking aristocrats at the imperial court and of rural landowners increased. Power centered in rural families began to rival the power of class-based officeholding. By the end of the 11th century, a family-based military aristocracy had emerged.

4. Restriction of economic freedom--Byzantine emperors continued the late Roman inclination to set prices, organize grain shipments to the capital, and monopolize trade in luxury goods. While this kept the masses out fo the streets and relatively well-fed, this was probably a factor in slowing technological development and economic innovation--and tended to restrict the growth of other urban areas in the Eastern Empire, as well.

B. Cultural achievements

1. Hagia Sophia cathedral--as well as a number of other places of worship

2. Byzantine religious art--an outgrowth of the religious archtecture

3. Cyrillic alphabet--used by Slavic Christians adhering to the Orthodox (Byzantine) rites in religious practice--and the basis for the persistance of Orthodox religious practice among the southern Slavic peoples (and Russians), while the Roman alphabet and religion prevails among the Poles, Czechs, and Croatians



II. Early Medieval Europe, 600-1000

A. The Time of Insecurity

1. Muslim Invasions--Arabs and Berbers crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711, and quickly overran the Visigoth kingdom in modern Spain. They pushed the Christian princes to the northern areas of the peninsula, then turned to invading France, reaching as far north as Tours (about 150 miles south of Paris) before being defeated and forced to withdraw to Iberia by Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne)

2. The Carolingian Empire--military effectiveness was the key element in the rise of the Carolingian family, first as the protectors of the Frankish kings, and then as kings themselves--and eventually as emperors. At the peak of Charlemagne's power, the Carolingian Empire encompassed all of Gaul and parts of Germany and Italy, with the pope ruling parts of the latter. When Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son, died, the Treaty of Verdun split the empire into three parts: the French-speaking west (France); the middle (Burgandy), and the German-speaking in the east (Germany). The Carolingian economic system based upon landed wealth and a brief intellectual revival sponsored personally by Charlemagne provided a common heritage.

3. Viking Raids--Europe was threatened not only from invaders from the south, but from the north, as well. The Vikings were adventerous and skilled sailors, and their hit-and-run raids around northern Europe struck fear into the hearts of the people living in those areas. Their legacy can still be viewed in the person of the stereotypical Irish redhead; Celts were more darkly complected, but with the offspring of Viking invaders, there grew a large population of redheads.

C. A Self-Sufficient Economy

1. Germanic Customs--the Germanic peoples who came to power in the vaccuum of the fall of Rome had little use for the urban-based civilization of the Romans; the population of cities fell, and much of the infrastructure constructed by the Romans fell into disrepair. The German diet consisted largely of beer, lard or butter, bread made from barley, rye, or wheat, all supplemented by pork from swine heards that were free range fed on acorns, beechnuts, and whatever else they found in forests.

2. The Manorial System--fear of attack led many small farmers to give their land to large landowners in return for physical and political protection. The large landowners, in turn, supported a fighting force to protect the area they were accumulating this land in--and to keep the former small landowners in line. In this hierarchical society, the former small landowners found their status changed, as well.



a. Serfs--Serfs were agricultural workers who belonged to the manor, tilled its fields, and owed dues and other obligations. Serfs could not leave the manor where they were born (legally). Most peasants in England, France, and western Germany were unfree serfs in the 10th and 11th centuries. In Bordeaux, Saxony, and  few other regions, free peasantry survived based on the egalitarian social structure of the Germanic people during their period of migration. Outright slavery, on the other hand, diminished as more and more peasants became serfs in return for a lord's protection.

D. Early Medieval Society in the West

1. Feudalism--is the term used to describe the the relationship between nobles and "vassals"--or those person nobles gave land to in return for military service. By the 10th century, these vassals using owned horses from which they fought from, and provided their own armor. As they obtained technology like stirrups, their armor became more elaborate

2. Knights--By the 11th century, the knight had emerged as the central figure in medieval warfare. As a knight became more prosperous, he could afford a more elaborate outfit, which signaled his greater status

3. Fiefdoms--a grant of land in return for military service was often called a fief. Although at first these grants were taken back at the end of the fief's life, by the 10th century, these fiefdoms could be inherited as long as the military service continued to be provided. It evolved as a general practice for a king or major noble to make grants of land to his vassals (other members of the nobility), who in turn made grants to their vassals. The lord of the manor provided governance and justice locally; the royal government was quite distant to the average peasant.

4. Noblewomen--became enmeshed in this system as heiresses and as candidates for marriage. A man who married a widow or the daughter of a lord could gain control of the lord's property. Noble daughters and sons had little say in marriage matters; issues of land, power, and military service took precendence.

III. The Western Church

A. Politics and the Church

1. The papacy--in the west Roman nobles lost control of the papacy, and it became a more powerful international office after the tenth century. Councils of bishops usually convened not only to chose the next pope, but also to fix church doctrine. The lack of trained clergy, difficult transportation, political disorder, and the prevalence of non-standard practice often made the enforcement of approved practice difficult.

2. The Holy Roman Empire--as the French philosopher Voltaire pointed out, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. It was a creation of the pope Charlemagne's father Pepin in an attempt to make Pepin an ally. Tension quickly grew between the pope and the various princes in Europe, particularly after Hildebrand as Pope Gregory decreed that all earthy princes were all subservient to him, since he was God's appointee on earth. This tension came to a head in the investure controversey, when Gregory excommunicated (denied the sacraments of the Church) the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV over Henry's refusal to follow Gregory's reforms. While Henry was penitent over this matter, when Gregory declared Henry deposed (removed as emperor) in 1078, Henry forced Gregory to flee from Rome, and Gregory died in exile in Salerno two year later. This dispute was not resolved until the Concordat of Worms, when Henry V renounced his right to choose bishops and abbots or bestow spiritual symbols upon them, while Pope Calixtus II agreed to permit the emperor to invest papally appointed bishops and abbots with any lay rights or obligations before their spiritual consecration.



3. Henry II of England and Thomas a Becket--Becket was Henry's closest friend and advisor, so when Henry convinced him to become a priest and had him appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (the most important bishop in England), Henry assumed he could therefore also control the Church in England. When Becket resisted, four of Henry's knights, knowing that Henry wished Becket dead, murdered him. The backlash from this underhanded deed undermined the authority the Henry had wielded.

B. Monasticism--became prominent in almost all medieval Christian lands, although its origins lie in the eastern lands of the Roman Empire.

1. Benedictine Rule--the most important form of monasticism in western Europe involved groups of monks or nuns living together in organized communities. The person most responsible for introducing this originally Egyptian practice in the Latin west was Benedict of Nursia in Italy. Benedict began his monastic career living as a hermit in a cave, but eventually organized several monastraries, each headed by an abbot. Benedictine Rule governed the behavior of monks, and envisioned a life of devotion and work, along with obigations of celibacy, poverty, and obedience to the abbot. Those who lived by monastic rules were classified as regular clergy, while those who lived in secular society were secular clergy.

2. Preservation of knowledge--since those living in monastaries were among the few people in European society during this time that could read and write, and because they were to devote themselves to work when not devoted to prayer, monastaries in western Europe were responsible for preserving much of the knowledge acculated by the Romans (Muslim societies and Byzantium preserved much of the Greek knowledge, plus their own discoveries).

3. Cluny--even with the Rule of Benedict, religious practices in monastaries were susceptible to corruption. The abbot at the Benedictine monastary in Cluny, France, led the first reform movement, and at the peak of Cluny's influence nearly 1,000 monastaries and priories (lower-level monastic houses) came under the rule of the abbot of Cluny.

IV. Western Europe Revives, 1000-1200

A. The New Millenium--when the next millenium passed, and Jesus did not reappear as was widely believed, Europeans seemed to gather the wherewithal to work to improve their society, since it seemed likely that they would be around a while longer.

B. The Role of Technology

1. Population growth--the population in western Europe doubled in the 200 years between 1000 and 1200

2. Horses and plows--Europeans switch over almost exclusively to the use of horses from oxen; horses can pull heavier loads, although they need more grain than oxen. Europeans also begin to use the horse collar, rather than previous kinds of harnesses, which shifted the burden back to the animals shoulders, rather than neck, and allowed them to pull things with choking themselves. A new kind of plow was also developed, which allowed ploughmen to furrow deeper, and to work in the heavier soils of western Europe.

C. Cities and the Rebirth of Trade

1. Independent Cities in Italy--Independent cities governed and defended by communes appeared first in Italy and in Flanders, and then spread elsewhere. Communes were groups of leading citizens who banded together to defend their city and to demand the right of self-government from their lay or religious lord. With this independence, they were able to attract workers from the surrounding countryside, who brought their skills to these cities, began manufacturing items--and provided merchants with the material to begin trading with.Venice, built on a series of swampy islands on the eastern side of the Italian peninsula, and Genoa on the western side, became two of the leading independent cities that sparked trade with Muslims in the Middle East, eventually trading with India and on the Silk Road.

2. Independent Cities in Flanders (modern Belgium)--cities like Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres rivaled Italian cities in wealth, by trading in fish caught in the North Sea, and by becoming an early textile manufacturing center.

V. The Crusades, 1095-1204

A. The Roots of the Crusades

1. The Truce of God--Christian societies in Europe were very violent, with knights looking to prove their worth, and war as a means of overcoming ones opponents. Church leaders attempted to change this atmosphere by decreeing certain times forbidden for carrying out war--Lent, Sundays, othe important holy days. While many knight welcomed a religiously approved alternative to fighting other Christians, the leaders of these societies were also looking for new lands to conquer and exploit. In addition, Italian merchants wanted to increase trade with the eastern Mediterranean, and eliminate the Muslim middlemen they were dealing with. But without the rivalry between the popes and kings discussed above, and without the desire of the Church to demonstrate political authority over western Christendom, the Crusades might never have happened.

2. Pilgrimages--were important in the religious life in Europe. The Muslim rulers benefited monetarily from these pilgrimages, and did their best to accommodate these pilgrims. Pilgrims were usually accompanied by knights during the long journey, who interacted with other knights and learned of efforts to overthrow Muslim rulers in other parts of Europe--particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. When security in the eastern Mediterranean began to break down after the Seljuk Turk victory and the spread of Turkish nomads throughout the region, tension rose.

3. Pope Urban II--despite theological differences between the Othodox and Roman Churches, the Byzantine emperor Alexius Conenus asked the pope and western European rulers to help him retake the Holy Land and end the Muslim threat. Urban responded, called upon western Christians to stop fighting each other, and to fight Muslims instead. While the First Crusade was fairly successful, capturing Jerusalem and establishing Christian communities in other locales in the region, Muslim retook Jerusalem in 1187; by the Fourth Crusade, the religious ardor that had animated the First Crusade had waned to the extent that the crusaders sacked Christian Constantinople before beginning, in order to pay for shipping the Crusaders across the Mediterranean

B. Impact of the Crusade--although at war with Muslims, western European crusaders were also impressed with the civilizations that Muslims created in the eastern Mediterranean, and sought to learn from them. The crusaders brought back to western Europe much of the knowledge preserved in the region, from Ancient Greece, from Arab scholars, translated it, and began to incorporate what they learned.

Islam After Muhammad

I. The Rise and Fall of the Caliphate, 632-1258

The Islamic caliphate built on the conquests the Arabs carried out after Muhammad's death gave birth to a dynamic and creative religious society. By the late 800s, however, one piece after another of this huge realm broke away. While the idea of a caliphate remains a touchstone of Sunni belief in the unity of the umma, because Sunni Islam never gave one person the power to define true belief, expel heretics, and discipline clergy like the popes were given in the Christian faith.

A. The Islamic Conquests, 643-711

1. Arab Conquests Outside Arabia--began with the second caliph, Umar, who ruled between 634 to 644.

a. Syria (636)
b. Egypt (639-642)
c. Sasanid Empire (632-651)
d. Tunisia (661)
e. Iberian Peninsula (711)--except for the northern third of the peninsula, which remained a center of resistance to Muslim rule for the next seven centuries.
f. Sind (711)--the southern Indus Valley was also conquered by Arabs from Iraq.

2. Stability--this vast area remained largely under the control of Arabs for the next three centuries, until conquest began anew during the 11th century when India and Anatolia experienced invasions and large portions of sub-Saharan Africa was converted peacefully to Islam through trade contacts.

3. Reasons for conquest--although these Arab conquerors all shared the same Muslim faith, they did not fight for converts to this religion; they instead fought to obtain the booty of war. The second caliph, Umar, prohibited Arabs from assuming ownership of conquered territory, and insisted that soldiers had to remain in a military camp to be eligible for the regular pay and opportunities for the spoils of war. The million or so Arabs who over the generations took part in these conquests constituted a small, self-isolated minority living on the taxes paid by a vastly non-Arab and non-Muslim subject population. The Arabs had little incentive to encourage conversion, and there is little evidence of a coherent missionary effort to spread Islam during the conquest period.

B. The Umayyad and Early Abbasid Caliphates, 661-850

1. Arab realm--the Umayyad caliphs presided over an Arab realm, rather than a religious empire. Centered in Damascus, they Umayyad regime relied upon an army consisting almost entirely of Muslim Arabs; they retained Sasanid and Byzantine administrative practices, and gradually replaced non-Muslim secretaries and tax officials with Muslims, as well as introducing Arabic and the language of government.

2. Growing unrest--although converts to Islam in this period only made up about 10 percent of the indigenous population, they were still important because of the small number of Arab warriors--and these converts resented the Arab social domination. In addition, non-Syrian Arabs envied the Syrian domination of caliph affairs, pious Muslims were disappointed with the unpious behavior of the caliphs, and Shi'ites and Kharijites attacked the Umayyad family's legitimacy as the heirs of Muhammad.

3. Abbasid Revolution--in 750, in the region of Khurasan in what is today northeastern Iran, the last Umayyad caliph was overthrown.  The Abbas family controlled the secret organization that coordinated the revolt, and utilized their kin connection with leading Shi'ites who were related to Ali, and in this way gained Shi'ite assistance to gain control. The Abbasid Caliphate remained in control of the region until 1258, when Mongol invaders killed the last of them in Baghdad.

a. With its roots among the semi-Persianized Arabs of the Khurasan, this new dynasty gradually adopted many of the ceremonies and customs of the Sasanid shah, and the government grew more complex in Baghdad.

b. With more non-Arab peoples converting to Islam, the ruling elite became more cosmopolitan, and this in turn promoted the growth of literature.

c. With the greater number of converts to Islam, discrimintation against non-Arab Muslims gradually faced.

C. Political Fragmentation, 850-1050

1. Abbasid Decline--caused by a variety of factors: limits of communication over such a vast area; lessening of the umma's solidarity, as the conversion of larger numbers of local populations lessened the threat against Islam. This then led local political elites to seek greater independence from the caliphate, to set up local principalities, and to siphon of a larger share of the tax revenue that previously went to Baghdad.

2. Mamluk Slave Soldiers--declining revenues, and the growing distrust of outlyings generals and troops, who were growing increasingly close to local elites, induced the caliphate to buy Turkic slaves called mamluks from Central Asia, and establish them as a standing army. The mamluk army proved to be extremely effective militarily, but also very costly--and prone to uprisising if not paid in a timely fashion.

3. Fall of the Abbasid Caliphate--in 945, after several attempts to save it proved fruitless, the Abbasid Caliphate fell to the Buyid family, from the Daylam region in northern Iran. The Buyids were Shi'ite, but because Shi'ite ideology had developed the idea that the last Iman had disappeared around 873, and would not reappear until the end of time, they were willing to keep the Abbasid caliph on the throne to keep the Sunni population in line.

4. Samanid Dynasty--this political fragmentation led to the rise of a number of smaller principalities, including the Samanid family, who established one of the more prosperous courts in Bukhara, a major city along the Silk Road. The Samanids patronized literature and learning, but the literature produced was in Persian written in Arabic letters.

5. African Muslims--Berber revolts against Arab rule led to the appearance after 740 let to the appearance of the city-states of Sijilmasa and Tahert on the northern fringe of the Sahara. The Kharijite (a second deviation from the Sunni/Shi'ite split) beliefs interfered with their east-west trade, and led them to begin to seek trading partners in the Sahara--where they found the Berber people. The earliest known sub-Saharan beneficiaries of this trade was the kingdom of Ghana, which was a major source of gold. It was one of the first lands outside the orbit of the caliphate to experience a gradual and peaceful conversion to Islam.

6. The Fatimid Caliphate--claimed to be be Shi'ite Imams descended from Ali (this claim is somewhate doubtful, however) established itself in Tunisia in 909. After consolidating its hold on northwest Africa, the Fatimids conquered Egypt in 969. Claiming the title of caliph in a direct challenge to the Abbasids, the Fatimids established their capitol in a town they called Cairo. The gold they were able to channel their way from West Africa made the Fatimids a major economic power in the Mediterranean.

7. Islamic Iberia--cut off from the rest of the Islamic world by the Straits of Gibraltar and, from 740, by the independent city-states of Morocco and Algeria, Umayyad Spain developed a distinctive Islamic culture that blended Roman, Germanic, and Jewish traditions with those of Arabs and Berbers. Although historians disagree on how quickly most of the Iberian population converted to Islam, it seems likely that the most rapid surge occured in the 10th century.

a. Muslims were responsible for developing cities in Iberia, particularly Cordoba, Seville, and Toledo, and for inspiring the development of the arts.

D. Assault from Within and Without, 1050-1258

1. Turks in the Middle East--The Turkish mamluks overthrew the remnant of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1030, when the Seljuk family established a Turkish Muslim state. Tughril Beg created a kingdom that stretched fro northern Afghanistan to Baghdad. The Seljuks later pressed on into Syria and Anatolia, administering a lethal blow to Byzantine power at the Battle of Manzikert, forcing  the Byzantine army to retreat to Constantinople, from which they never emerged.

2. Economic Decline--under Turkish rule, the nomadic background of the Seljuks led them to neglect the infrastructure that had supported agriculture in the region; agriculture, as a not unsurprising result, went into decline--aided by global cooling which also affected raising crops.

3. Crusader Challenge--internecine feuding preoccupied the Seljuk family when the Christian Crusaders arrived in 1099. Although these Christians were able to establish principalities in Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, and Jersalem, these cities quickly became mere pawn in the shifting pattern of politics already present.

a. Salah-al-Din (Saladin)--a Kurd who seized power at the death of his uncle, defeated the Fatimid Dynasty in Egypt and Syria, and in 1187 recaptured Jerusalem from the Europeans. Saladin's descendents defeated subsequent Crusades.

II. Islamic Civiliation

A. Law and Dogma--The Shari'a did not exist in Muhammad's time. It developed after his death, as those who knew him personally also died, and it no longer was possible to refer to someone who could related how Muhammad would respond to a certain situation

1. Sunna and Hadith--while some Muslims argued for the concept that the reasoned considerations of a mature man offered the best resolution of issued not covered by Q'ranic revelation, other aruded for the sunna, or tradition, of the Prophet as the best guide. To understand the sunna, they collected and studied thousands of reports, called hadith, which purported to convey the precise workd or deeds of Muhammad.

2. The Shari'a--Muslim scholars collected those hadith they determined were the most reliable into books (Sunnis into six books, Shi'ites into four) that over time gained authoritative status, which every Muslim ruler was expected to abide by and to enforce. In practice, this expectation was often not met, but it provided an important basis for an urban lifestyle that varied little from Morocco to India.

B. Converts and Cities

1. Impact of Conversion--conversion was easy--one simply stated in the presence of a Muslim "There is no God by God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God." There was no priesthood established by Muhammad to guide the faithful; usually one had to live among Arabs to learn to read the Q'ran, and to learn how to behave as a Muslim should. Continuing to live in one home community as a Muslim was more difficult, because religious belief had by this time become the main component of social identity. Migration into the growing cities was a way to avoid this, and to take advantage of the economic opportunities that were present in these places where Arab tax revenues were flowing.

2. Urban growth--Islam was largely an urban phenomenon, and as it grew, so did cities.

3. Islam and Society--these growing urban centers fostered the development of agriculture in adjacent rural areas, as they grew a variety of crops to feed these cities--and trade developed between cities, aided by abundant coinage.

4. Technology and Science--Muslim scholars inherited much of the knowlege propagated by the Greeks and Romans. The writings of Aristotle were translated into Arabic, and Muslim doctors and astronomers developed skills far in advance of their European counterparts.

C. Women and Islam

1. Women's lives--women seldom traveled. In rural areas, they worked in the fields; in urban areas, they were restricted largely to their own households. Only slave women could be in the presence of unrelated men; while men could have up to four wives, and as many slave concubines as he wished, a woman was restricted to only one husband.

2. Women's legal status--despite these onerous restrictions, Muslim women  were better off than their Christian or Jewish counterparts. They could inherit property, which remained theirs to keep or sell. Women could remarry if their husbands divorced them, and they could initiate divorce proceedings under some circumstances. They could also go on a haj

3. Homosexuality--because of the restrictions placed on women, homosexual relationships were usually tolerated, although not encouraged.

4. Slavery--Islam allowed slavery, but forbade Muslims from enslaving other Muslims or so-called People of the Bood--Christians and Jews--except those captured during war, which was the fate of many women caputred in army camps. A heriditary slave society did not develop, however, and the offspring of slave women and Muslim men were born free.

C. Recenterring Islam

1. Ulama--although this kept Islam from splintering as much as Christianity would in the following centuries, factional disputes also arose among various Ulama groups as to what constituted proper Islamic practice.

2. Madrasa--a result of this splintering was the establishment of religious colleges in a number of cities, the madrasa gave a place for scholars drawn to these urban settlements to teach what they had learned from their ulama group

3. Sufi brotherhoods--roughly analogous to the development of fraternal groups.

Rise of Islam

I. The Sasanid Empire, 224-651

A. Politics and Society--the Sasanid Kingdom was established around 224CE. While it was sometimes in conflict with the Romans located west of the kingdom--and subsidized Arab chieftains to protect the kingdom from invasion from the west (and the Romans--or, as they were known after 330CE, the Byzantines--did the same to ensure their kingdom wasn't invaded from the east)

1. Politics--the mountains and plateaus of the interior of Iran formed the hinterland for the Sansanid Kingdom. Cities were little more than fortified military outposts. Much of the area was ruled by aristocratic families, connected to the shah (king) by bonds of kinship--although there did not develop the feudal structure that dominated European society.

2. Society--Sananid society was dominated by the aristocratic families who lived on rural estates. The male members of these families spent most of their time hunting, feasting, and learning the arts of war, just like the the noble warriors described in the sagas of ancient kings and heroes sung at their banquets.

3. The Silk Road--brought trade goods into the Sansanid Kingdom, including plants like cotton, sugar cane, rice, citrus trees, eggplants, and other crops adopted from India and China. Sansanid farmers pioneered raising all of these crops in western Asia, and are responsible for introducing them to farmers further west

B. Religion and Empire

1. Zoroasterism--the Sansanids established Zoroasterism as the official state religion, something their predecessors the Parthians had not done.

2. Christianity--was the official religion of the Byzantines, the rivals of the Sansanids. Although Zoroasterism had previously encouraged religious toleration, this was transformed during the Sansanid era to intolerance--probably a result of it becoming a means to further a political ends. Christianity did not have the track record for tolerance of other religious faith practices, but it also became increasingly intolerant during this era--for much the same reason, probably, since it also served as an adhesive role in Byzantine society. Ordinary people in both Byzantium and the Sansanid Kingdom became pawns in the struggle between the two kingdoms, and saw that sometimes their differing religious views were tolerated, while other times they would be persecuted.

a. Heresy--from the 4th century onwards, Christian bishops exercised greater power in regulating the practice of the religion, declaring some practices and beliefs that had been tolerated un-Christian, or heresy

b. Nestorian Christians--maintained that divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ coexisted, and maintained that Mary was therefore not the Mother of God--but only the mother of the human Jesus. The majority of the bishops present held that this teaching was in error, and ordered the Nestorians to stop preaching it, or be barred from the Church. The Nestorians instead sought refuge with the Sansanids.

c. Manichaeanism--a preacher named Mani preached a dualist faith--a struggle between good and evil--that was theologically derived from Zoroasterism. While this would seem to make Manichaean practice a natural fit with the Sansanids, Mani and many of followers were martyred by the Sansanids in 276. Manichaeanism remained a potent force, however, and compete throughout Central Asia with Nestorian Christianity for converts.

d. Effects on Arabs--Arabs were exposed to the religious disagreements because they acted as border protectors for both the Byzantines and the Sansanids; because religious practice during this time helped to define one's self, Arabs did develop an appreciation of the doctrinal controversies among Christians.

II. The Origins of Islam

A. The Arabian Peninsula Before Muhammad--throughout most of its history, more people have lived as farmers on the relatively watered coast than in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula as pastoralists.

1. Agriculture--farming villages along the southwestern coast--particularly in Yemen--receive enough rainfall to support agriculture--a surprising development for many of us, no doubt, since the popular image of the Arabian Peninsula is one of a vast desert wasteland.

2. Pastoralists--in the interior, of course, the few people residing there made a living raising camels. With the advent of long-distance trade, because of the development of the Silk Road, some of these pastoral people became traders or involved in the trade through providing camels or as guides for trade caravans.

3. Mecca--was a late-blooming trade city, located near the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula. A nomadic kin group known as the Quraysh settled in Mecca in the fifth century and assumed control of the trade traversing through the region. Mecca occupies a barren mountain valley halfway between Yemen and Syria; it is too far away from Byzantine Syria, Sasanid Iraq, and Ethiopia-controlled Yemen to be attacked by any of those political entities, and therefore prospered as a local connection to a wider trade network. Mecca was home to a shrine called the Ka'ba, said to have been built by Abraham, and a site just outside the city as the place where God asked Abraham to sacrafice his son Ishmael (the son he fathered with Hagar, his wife Sarah's handmaiden)--identified by the Jewish bible as the forefather of the Arabs.

B. Muhammad in Mecca and Medina

1. Muhammad--was born in Mecca in 570, and grew up as an orphan in the house of his uncle. He became a trader, and married a Quarysh widow named Khadija, whose caravan interests he superintended. During the year 610, Muhammad began meditating at night in the mountainous terrain around Mecca, and during one night vigil, he received what he claimed was a visit from the angel Gabriel, telling him to preach about the one true God (Allah in Arabic).

2. Revelations--Muhammad related what Allah told him in verse. This would have been in line with practice at the time, especially with pre-literate people, because verse is easier to remember than straight text. Because Muhammad's verse was extremely beautiful, people hearing him assumed he was under a spell from jinns, the spirits thought to possess seers and poets; Muhammad, of course, believed that he was communicating with Allah.

3. Islam--translates to "the will of God," and Muslim means one who submits to Islam

4. Muhammad's banishment--the leaders of Mecca feared that accepting Muhammad as the sole agent of the one true God would diminish their own power, so they began to put pressure on his relatives to disavow him, and to punish the weakest of his followers. As a result, Muhammad and some of his followers removed to Medina, 215 miles north of Mecca.

C. Formation of the Umma--Before Muhammad, Arab society was completely organized by kin relationships. Leaders in Medina decided to accept Muhammad and his followers, because they viewed him as a mediating force that would end the internal feuding that the leading families in Medina had engaged in. It was during this time in Medina that the strictures in behavior developed in Islam.

1. Battle for Mecca--these continuing revelations led to a determination that Mecca had to be won over to Islam, and a low-grade war, defined by raids and negotiations with desert nomads, sapped Mecca's strength (and a portion of its wealth), and brought that city's leaders to the belief that God favored Muhammad--although Muhammad himself remained in Medina.

D. Succession to Muhammad--in 632, after a brief illness, Muhammad died, and a battle over the religion he founded commenced.

1. Abu Bakr--Muhammad had no direct male heir, because his only son had died of an illness years before. Within 24 hours of his death, a group of Medina leaders along with three close friends determined that a man named Abu Bakr, one of Muhammad's early followers and the father of Muhammad's favorite wife A'isha, should become the khalifa (caliph in English, meaning successor).

2. Five Pillars of Islam--1) Avowal that there is only one God, and that Muhammad is his messenger; 2) prayer five times a day; 3) fasting during the lunar month of Ramadan; 4) paying alms; and 5) making a pilgrimmage to Mecca at least one during one's lifetime. Muslim armies fought to confirm the authority of the newborn caliphate against other Arab communities that had abandoned their allegiance to Medina or followed other would-be prophets; some of this fighting spilled over into non-Arab areas in Iraq.

3. The Q'ran--Abu Bakr reportedly ordered the men who had written down Muhammad's revelations to collect them in a book, which Muslims believe took its final form in 650. They view this book not as the words of Muhammad, but as the unalterable word of God. Theologically, it compares not so much to the Bible, as to the person of Jesus Christ.

4. Disintegration of the Umma--although willing to accept God's will, members of the umma could not come to an agreement over the successors to Muhammad. When rebels assassinated the third caliph, Uthman, in 656, the assassins nominated Ali, Muhammad's first cousin and the husband of his daughter Fatima.

a. Shi'ites--the party of Ali, who believed that Ali was the rightful heir to Muhammad. When Ali accepted the nomination of the assassins, civil war broke out. Ali prevailed in the initial battle, but the challenge was renewed by a relative of Uthman. Inconclusive battle gave way to arbitration. The arbitrators decided that Uthman did not deserve to be killed, and that Ali was wrong to accept the nomination; Ali rejected these findings, but was murdered anyway by one of his followers for agreeing to arbitration in the first place.

b. Sunnis--the "People of Tradition and Community" supported the first three caliphs, and regarded the succeeding caliphs--except for the Ali interlude, of course--to be immans.